Mendele Lohengrin, a klezmer singspiel by composer Evgeni Orkin and librettist Martin Valdés-Stauber (2025), was created as a project for the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich under the direction of Daniel Grossmann. In its Czech premiere for the Eternal Hope (Věčná naděje) festival, it opens up space not only for reflection on the Jewish experience in the modern world but also for more general contemplation of the experience of moving between distinct musical worlds. This text follows the storyline of the singspiel inspired by Heinrich York-Steiner's 1898 short story and asks what Mendele's story tells us about aesthetic fascination, antisemitism, and the boundaries of access—then and now.

The hero of the singspiel—a musical-theatrical genre combining singing with the spoken word—is a poor musician, a klezmer named Mendele from Martinsdorf, who fulfills a dream using his modest savings and travels to the Vienna Opera. By chance, he hears Wagner's Lohengrin there, and the experience shakes him so deeply that upon his return to the shtetl, he refuses to play the traditional repertoire at weddings and celebrations, wishing only to perform Wagner. However, what represents musical enlightenment for him becomes madness and a scandal for his community—and gradually a personal tragedy for him as he is confronted with Wagner's antisemitic treatise Judaism in Music.

The source material is the 1898 short story Mendele Lohengrin: die Geschichte eines Musikanten by Heinrich Elchanan York-Steiner, an Austrian-Jewish theater critic and Zionist from Theodor Herzl's circle. He published it in the Zionist newspaper Die Welt—and this context is essential: the text was intended for an audience of urban, secularized Jewry at the turn of the century, who shared the cultural aspirations and tensions of European modernity. The character of the klezmer Mendele therefore does not represent an "authentic voice of tradition" but rather a literary construct. The story can be read as a satire on the desire for assimilation, cultural self-alienation, and the Jewish infatuation with German high culture, which simultaneously shatters against antisemitism. This satirical framework is adopted by the contemporary libretto, which develops it on a musical-theatrical level.

For the Czech public, klezmer is still not a self-evident term. It is often reduced to a few sonic stereotypes—the "crying" clarinet, wedding revelry, a nostalgic vision of Eastern European Jewry—or to the revivalist concert aesthetics of recent decades. Yet klezmer is much more: it is a historically fluid musical world of Ashkenazi Jews that formed around the musical profession of the same name as early as the Middle Ages in Central Europe, later in Eastern Europe, and was further transformed in the diaspora, especially in the USA, following the migrations and catastrophes of the 20th century. We intentionally choose the word "world"—along with ethnomusicologist Zuzana Jurková—instead of the word "genre" or "culture," which can lead to the idea of something fixed and closed. A musical world is a community of people who share a certain way of performing music, its values, and its purpose, and who constantly recreate it. From this perspective, Mendele Lohengrin is exceptionally rewarding material: the entire plot is based on the collision of two such worlds.

The Yiddish word 'klezmer' combines two Hebrew roots: 'kley' (instruments) and 'zemer' (melody). Klezmers (klezmorim) acted as professional players primarily at weddings and celebrations, where their task was to organize ritual time and manage the community's emotions—from ritualized weeping during the seating of the bride to ecstatic joy during circle dances. Klezmer as a musical profession also has roots in the Czech lands: in the early modern period, Prague was among the significant centers of Jewish instrumental musicianship, and the existence of a guild of Jewish musicians is documented from at least 1641.

Walter Zev Feldman, a leading researcher in the field of klezmer, explains that in the traditional shtetl environment, klezmer functioned primarily as a participatory musical practice: the music was not intended for passive listening but was an inseparable part of the wedding ritual. Klezmers were not "artists" in the modern sense but service providers: they played "on request," a piece lasted as long as people danced, and the rhythm had to be predictable so that as many people as possible could participate.

At the same time, klezmers functioned as "musical polyglots": they mastered the klezmer musical language and repertoire intended for the internal Jewish world. This language was full of modal nuances, rich ornamentation, and spiritual meanings understood only within the community. Simultaneously, they knew the repertoire and style of playing intended for those outside the community so they could provide professional service to non-Jewish neighbors. In those cases, they would play polonaises, mazurkas, or local folklore. Ethnomusicology refers to this ability to "switch" between musical worlds as bimusicality, an equivalent of bilingualism, which was typical for Eastern European Jews and allowed them to survive economically and culturally for centuries.

The moment Mendele, upon his return from Vienna, refuses to submit to what is expected of a klezmer at a wedding, he arouses more than just aesthetic disapproval—he threatens the ritual performance itself and the function of music within it. His rebellion is more radical than it seems: it is not just about choosing a different repertoire, but about disrupting the social purpose of music. It is here that the difference between participatory and presentational musical regimes becomes apparent—two distinct ideas of what music actually is and what it is supposed to do.

Mendele's journey to Vienna is stylized as an initiatory experience. In the Vienna Opera, he sits high up in the second gallery, where he sees nothing but hears everything in an unusually vast silence. He experiences a state of emotional rapture and falls into inconsolable weeping. Two young conservatory students explain to him that "Wagner is a great musical prophet, he fought against the old bad music, invented new music, and brought it to the world" and that "the task of every honest artist is to suppress any other music."

In York-Steiner's short story, the counterpart to the musical world of the klezmers is not the world of European art music in general, but specifically Richard Wagner as one of its extremes. Here, Wagner is not just a famous composer and a symbol of "high" culture—he is the bearer of a different, exceptionally escalated presentational musical regime and cultural values incommensurable with klezmer, as well as specifically of antisemitism.

Wagner's music, brought to maximum aesthetic and ideological autonomy, demands distance and silence from the audience; it claims sacred reverence and sacrifice. As a modern project, it speaks the language of universal validity but functions as an exclusive, hierarchical, and exclusionary project. Mendele is fascinated not only by a different musical language—he also adopts a value system in which his previous world is no longer merely "different," but also "low" and "bad," while Wagner appears to him as a musical truth of an almost divine order.

The attempt to play the overture from Lohengrin at a wedding feast already foreshadows what is truly at stake in Mendele's story: the limit encountered by the movement between musical worlds—from three sides at once. The Wagnerian sound is, by its nature, non-transferable to the context of a klezmer wedding—and that is precisely what makes Mendele a fool in the eyes of the community. Furthermore, Wagner denied that Jews could be full participants in German musical culture.

Yet, movement between musical worlds in itself was nothing exceptional in Jewish history—on the contrary. Many Jewish musicians mastered several musical languages and were able to switch between them with extraordinary creativity and success. The capacity for musical polyglotism, which for centuries allowed klezmers to hold their own among different communities, becomes in Mendele's case an instrument of collision with the barriers of the specific Wagnerian sound, with social and ideological walls, and ultimately a source of self-alienation. The "boring strum, strum," as Mendele calls it, used to form the heartbeat of his service to the community. Now, after meeting the Wagnerian ideal, it tortures him with its ordinariness. He believes that by adopting these standards, he will become part of that "noble" Wagnerian world—and it is here that the deepest abyss opens: to the world that fascinates him, he remains merely an "alien element" that Wagner essentially despises. Mendele's illusion finally shatters when Rabbi Modsche's son confronts him directly: "Listen, Reb Mendele, they say you are interested in Wagner and want to introduce Martinsdorf to him at any cost! Do you also know that this Wagner fellow terribly hates Jews?"

Wagner's antisemitism was not a marginal personal trait, but a sophisticated, publicly formulated ideology. In his treatise Das Judenthum in der Musik (1850), he interpreted what we today call musical polyglotism as "parasitic mimicry": to him, the Jewish musician was not a sovereign mediator but a cultural chameleon who only outwardly imitates European forms without being able to internally understand them. His attack was directed not only against an abstract "Jewry" but against specific successful Jewish musicians—Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer—who personified Jewish success in the music of the majority society.

Mendele's tragedy culminates in feverish scenes where he tears pages from Wagner's very treatise Judaism in Music. He confronts his "old God" with that Wagnerian faith in which Jewish worship is merely "soulless babble." And he destroys his instrument—the bassette, which for generations had connected him with the community, became in the light of the Wagnerian ideal a symbol of "lowness" that could no longer be endured. And yet, the gesture of breaking the instrument is not a surrender—it is the rage of a man who had the courage and creativity to cross boundaries.

Wagner's ambivalence has not disappeared to this day. His work remains a central part of the world opera repertoire, but its reception is permanently burdened by both Wagner's own antisemitism and the Nazi appropriation of his work and symbolism—including the symbolism of the Grail—as a tool for the construction of Aryan identity. In post-war Israel, Wagner's music became the subject of an informal but deeply felt boycott, perceived as an act of piety toward Holocaust survivors. Conductor Daniel Barenboim's controversial attempt to break this taboo in Jerusalem in 2001 sparked a stormy debate—and showed that the question of whether Wagner's music can be separated from his antisemitism and its Nazi misuse remains open.

Therefore, it is precise that the singspiel Mendele Lohengrin is not constructed as a satire with a simple condemnation nor as a defense of such a separation—rather, it shows how deeply aesthetic fascination and historical trauma can be intertwined. It does not aim to be a historical document. Beside the narrator's voice and instrumental klezmer, Evgeni Orkin inserts Yiddish songs performed by a soprano. He works consciously with anachronism: into a story from the end of the 19th century, he inserts American Yiddish hits by composers such as Abraham Ellstein or Sholom Secunda from the 1940s, and moreover, a publicly singing female voice—historically unimaginable in the context of the traditional shtetl. Thus, he does not represent the "voice of the old shtetl," but klezmer as part of the modern, diasporic, and transnational culture of the New York Yiddish theater.

The cultural conflict represented in the singspiel is not a simple battle between "tradition" and "modernity." It is a clash of different modernities: one growing out of Jewish musical worlds, built on translation and movement, and the other—Wagnerian, aesthetic, and ideological—which proclaims itself the only universal norm. The inserted Yiddish hits serve as a reminder that while Mendele was destroying himself in an attempt to enter the Wagnerian musical world, a new, confident Jewish musical world was emerging in the diaspora in the meantime—without the need for outside permission.

The creators of the singspiel do not pretend to be returning the lost world of the shtetl to us. On the contrary: through anachronisms and clashes of genres, they show that any attempt at an "authentic rest" in a single identity is impossible today. Mendele Lohengrin is not a historical excursion but a metaphor for our present, in which ideas of home are again becoming tools for excluding and dehumanizing the other. Mendele reminds us that any attempt at exclusive ownership of any cultural "Grail" ends only in ruins and broken instruments. And yet, he remains an inspiration: his courage and perceptiveness in crossing the boundaries of musical worlds are more valuable than any such quest for exclusivity.

For the Eternal Hope (Věčná naděje) festival, Mendele Lohengrin is fitting not only because of Prague's symbolic position as one of the historical "cradles" of klezmer, but primarily because it offers an encounter with the complexity of the Jewish musical experience in Europe: with movement between different musical worlds, straddling village and city, tradition and modernity, minority and majority, fascination and exclusion, historical continuity and its violent interruption. This corresponds to the profile of the festival, which does not seek a museum-like display of the past but its contemporary contemplation through music and memory.

Prague was an important node where different Jewish musical worlds intersected—before these continuities were violently severed in the 20th century. Therefore, presenting such projects in Prague has a twofold effect: on the one hand, it opens up a European context; on the other, it painfully recalls the absence of full continuity. And it reminds us of something even more fundamental: that the Holocaust, which afflicted Czechoslovak Jews, did not just happen to "them"—it happened to us all, and we carry its consequences together. In this sense, the Prague performance of Mendele Lohengrin is more than a guest appearance by a foreign ensemble: it is an entry into the debate on how the past and present of Jewish culture appear in the Czech public space.

Selected Literature

Feldman, Walter Zev. Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Gruber, Ruth Ellen. Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe. University of California Press, 2002.

Jurková, Zuzana. Pražské hudební světy (Prague Musical Worlds). Prague: Karolinum, 2013.

Ottens, Rita, and Joel Rubin. Klezmeři (Klezmer Musicians). Prague: H&H, 2003.

Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

This year's edition bears the subtitle "The Courage to Discover." In the program, you focus on both the legacy of Pavel Bořkovec and composers linked to the Terezín legacy. What is the greatest "discovery" in this year's program for you personally?

For us, E. W. Korngold's String Sextet is almost a revelation. We are all encountering this work for the first time, and it is a truly enriching meeting. PBQ and such late-Romantic repertoire haven't crossed paths many times, and we are delighted to be able to immerse ourselves in this florid music. We are also happy that our colleagues and friends, Pavel Ciprys and Matyáš Keller, accepted our invitation. It is always refreshing to expand our established foursome with new possibilities for musical dialogues.

Bearing the name of Pavel Bořkovec is both a commitment and a mission. How has your relationship with his work evolved over the years, and how do you try to make his music accessible to contemporary listeners?

Over the years we have dedicated to his music, we have gained a certain confidence. we recorded Bořkovec's complete quartet works for Czech Radio. We try to promote his music at most of our concerts. The hesitation to present his work, which had somewhat unfortunately faded from the audience's awareness, has long since disappeared. It is music that is—at least at first listen—quite demanding, but immensely deep, fierce, and eloquent. Sometimes we offer it in the context of the pedagogical lineage Dvořák–Suk–Bořkovec, and we receive feedback from the audience that Bořkovec is a surprising discovery and the highlight of the concert, even in the company of his predecessors. We are truly proud to carry his name on our shield.

The music of composers who created in the most difficult life conditions carries a huge charge of resilience. As performers, how do you manage to convey this emotion of "hope" to the audience without the evening feeling merely like a commemoration?

Music created in these conditions carries one great message. Let us remember that these works were created at times when it was uncertain what tomorrow would bring, let alone whether your music would ever see the light of day. Therefore, they arose from a single impulse—from the irrefutable necessity to create, to record on manuscript paper something that cannot be expressed elsewhere or otherwise. I am not saying that music cannot be created this way during times of abundance and peace. But with the "Terezín composers," for example, it is certain that their works from this period contain pure music that lacks any motive of self-promotion or self-interest and, on the contrary, overflows with creativity and hope for the future.

If you had to choose one moment or one movement from the repertoire for April 12th that most defines "eternal hope," what would it be?

I apologize, I cannot choose just one movement. Perhaps the final movement of Burian's quartet with its citation of a theme that relates strongly to contemporary social issues. Or the Adagio from Korngold's Sextet, where we encounter explicitly Mahlerian himmlische scenes. Or perhaps the fourth movement of Ravel's quartet, in which we place eternal hope that we won't be intimidated even by a five-eight time signature at a breakneck tempo?

Uhelný mlýn in Libčice is a space with a strong industrial genius loci. How much are you looking forward to the connection between your interpretation and this raw, modern space? Does the architecture of the hall influence how you perceive the acoustics and the energy of the pieces?

We are eagerly curious about the spaces of Uhelný mlýn. To some extent, we always "struggle" with the acoustic character of a specific space. But generally, our instruments prefer places that bring their own resonance to our music and actually participate in the performance. Incidentally, because of the architecture and genius loci, we also recorded Pavel Bořkovec's 5th String Quartet in the First Republic-era Winternitz Villa.

The Eternal Hope Festival often chooses unconventional venues. What makes it more interesting for you as a quartet to play in a "non-concert" environment compared to traditional halls like the Rudolfinum?

Precisely for their uniqueness and the specific features these spaces offer. They can also often provide a completely new context and an added dimension to the entire musical dramaturgy. Even as an audience member, I like to experience site-specific concerts and performances, and even if these places do not always provide ideal acoustic conditions, the added value of the genius loci elevates the experience to a completely different level.

Your quartet is known for its energy and precision. What would you use to entice someone who may have never been to a string quartet concert before but is attracted by a visit to Uhelný mlýn?

I would definitely emphasize the opportunity to hear both a string quartet and a string sextet in one evening. Also, we cannot guarantee that Uhelný mlýn won't need a visit from a structural engineer and further renovation after our performance, so it's high time to visit. The concert takes place on Sunday evening, which invites a "cultural excursion." What should listeners carry in their minds on the train journey from Libčice back home? In their minds, hope and faith in the goodness of humanity; in their pockets, perhaps our CD.

For two Prague natives, Libeň, the old Jewish quarter, was one of those formative places during the First Republic era. Arnošt Lustig (1926–2011), the future world-renowned writer, screenwriter, and university professor, and Erik Polák (1929–1996), the future prominent historian and educator of the Terezín Memorial, were contemporaries. They were separated by only three years in age and by the fact that in their childhood, Arnošt lived in Lower Libeň while Erik lived in Upper Libeň.

However, they were united by much more than what divided them. For example, it was the environment of Jewish families that shaped their character from childhood. Later, it was the shared, several-year-long drastic experience of internment in the Terezín ghetto, Auschwitz, and other concentration camps. Arnošt was already an adult when he arrived, while Erik was still coming of age. It was not only unbreakable hope but especially their youth that helped them survive the hardships of Terezín and later other concentration camps. Simply put, they were deemed fit for forced labor in the work camps.

The exhibition, titled “I Want to Live Where I Love It,” tells this story. It commemorates this year’s 100th anniversary of Arnošt Lustig’s birth and the 30th anniversary of Erik Polák’s death. Furthermore, Lustig’s anniversary is included on the UNESCO list of significant anniversaries for the 2026–2027 period. Therefore, the exhibition is also part of the international multi-genre initiative FestivAL100, taking place in the Czech Republic and 11 other countries across four continents.

The initiator of the exhibition, Arnošt Lustig’s daughter Eva—co-founder of the Arnošt Lustig Endowment Fund and a documentary filmmaker—has been dedicated to developing her father’s legacy since his passing in 2011. She often remembers her father fondly: “Arnošt was proud of his Czech identity and his Jewishness. And most of all, he valued the human being. People connected with truth and sincerity. Good people. A person capable of giving the better part of themselves, because within each of us, there is both the better and the worse. By his very essence, Arnošt was a writer. He wrote so he could live. He lived so he could write. He wrote about what was in his blood, his heart, and his brain. He wrote every spare second. He wrote even when he wasn’t writing.”

In addition to the Arnošt Lustig Endowment Fund, the Music for Eternal Hope Endowment Fund—organizer of the Eternal Hope music festival—is also participating in the realization of the exhibition. The latter also cares for the legacy of Erik Polák. His significance lay not only in his role as a historian for the Terezín Memorial but primarily as the creator of the methodology for teaching the mission of the Jewish community in schools.

Polák’s son recalled his father: “Erik Polák always actively tried to improve the world around him. I formulated his message during a memorial meeting on the anniversary of his death in a sentence (it is more of a legacy): Work on not forgetting, do not forget. History, which he loved, studied, and dedicated his work to, shows many horrors and violence that we can hardly fully imagine today, let alone anticipate. However, in history, there is also the hope that even the greatest horrors will end and people will create a better world together. He did not speak much about faith; he was not convinced that eternal gods could limit the horrors of this planet.”

The exhibition is conceived as a selection of quotes from the literary works of both authors, reflecting the course of their lives. Arnošt Lustig is represented primarily by the audiobook CONFESSION (Multisonic, Prague 2005) and Erik Polák by the book Three Chapters (Sdělovací technika, Prague 2006, available as an audiobook on Supraphonline). The flow of events is then clarified by brief accompanying texts and photographs. It is fitting that the exhibition is installed in the Velký mlýn (Great Mill) in Prague-Libeň, a multifunctional cultural space that also houses a branch of the Municipal Library of Prague with a reading room. The exhibition can thus be visited not only by readers and experts on the works of both authors but also by attendees of concerts, lectures, and other cultural events taking place there. The exhibition is open from April 24, 2026.

Mgr. Svatopluk K. Jedlička

Photographs:

The New Synagogue in Libeň remains a reminder of the former Jewish town and the place where Arnošt and Erik met in their childhood.
(photo: Svatopluk Jedlička)

Arnošt Lustig with Erik Polák’s grandson in 2005 (photo: Polák family archive)

Erik Polák reading the names of Holocaust victims at the Jewish Cemetery in Terezín in 1993 (photo: Terezín Memorial archive)

The authors are responsible for the selection and presentation of the views and opinions expressed in the FestivAL100 project, which do not necessarily reflect those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

In the cultural program of Prague 8, we discovered an intriguing concert scheduled for March 23, 2026, at 7:30 PM in the intimate setting of the Libeň Chateau. It is part of this year's Eternal Hope (Věčná naděje) International Music Festival. During the organizational preparations for the concert, we spoke with Dr. Martina Jankovská, co-founder of the festival and a member of the board of the Music for Eternal Hope Endowment Fund.

What is the tradition of the festival?

The music festival was founded in 2017 by Jiří Polák, son of Libeň native Erik Polák—a historian who passed through the Terezín ghetto as a child and miraculously survived the entire Holocaust. The festival was established in memory of his Jewish ancestors, many of whom were not as fortunate and did not survive the hardships of the Holocaust. Erik Polák explicitly wished to act in a way that ensured people would not forget… The festival presents music not only by the so-called Terezín composers (Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas) but any music composed or performed during times of oppression, war, and the Holocaust, as well as music that speaks out against violence, hatred, or discrimination—both in historical times and today.

How much has the festival grown during its nearly ten years of existence?

The project, of which the upcoming concert is a part, presents not only classical music but also jazz, klezmer, and crossover; it organizes theatrical performances, programs for children and youth, and lectures, both in traditional concert halls and in newly discovered locations. There are also excursions outside of Prague combined with exploring the genius loci of various sites. Recently, the festival has begun presenting compelling stories—human fates that can serve as a source of education, inspiration, and admiration for the strength of the human spirit.

And what will be the story of the March evening at the Libeň Chateau?

Baritone Petr Matuszek, one of the most prominent performers of Terezín composers, and versatile pianist Jiří Knotte have prepared a program that spans from deep introspection to unrestrained rhythmic joy. You will hear the delicate lyricism of Viktor Ullmann and Pavel Haas, composers who, even in the darkness of the Terezín ghetto, managed to create works full of humanity and hope. Their compositions will be complemented by Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Fairy Tale of Long Longing, bringing a touch of Romantic dreaminess to the evening. However, the other side of the evening belongs to rhythm and life. Solemn themes will be replaced by the energy of interwar jazz and modernism. The program includes George Gershwin's iconic Rhapsody in Blue in an arrangement for solo piano and Jaroslav Ježek's unmistakable Bugatti Step. Music is a unique form of art that immediately connects people in both suffering and joy, elevates us from mundane triviality, heals grievances, and leads us toward perceiving a new dimension of creativity.

More information at www.vecnanadeje.org.

Tickets can be found at https://vecnanadeje.org/tickets/

Terezín composers have accompanied baritone Petr Matuszek for three decades—as both a performer and a music researcher. In the following interview, he discusses the power of this music and his relationship with the song cycles of Ullmann and Ježek.

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